10-24-05, 8:42 am

A free press depends partially on journalists’ ability to be protected from government or corporate coercion against revealing confidential sources of information. Obviously, if a whistleblower’s identity is made public, that person can be targeted. Protecting confidentiality allows the press access to information that might be kept from the public to its great harm.

This particular issue of journalistic ethics and Constitutional freedom has very little to do with what now infamous New York Times reporter Judith Miller did when she refused to tell a federal grand jury about her conversations with high-ranking Bush administration officials during which the identity of an undercover CIA agent may have been illegally revealed.

On an episode of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, Miller sought to cover her decision to protect the identity of one of the most powerful men in Washington, DC, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's top adviser, after he apparently illegally revealed the identity of a CIA agent in order to smear a critic of the Bush administration's drive to war in Iraq. Miller may have also been protecting others in the administration such as Karl Rove.

Miller, in the loftiest tone she could muster, invoked an important journalistic right: 'I didn't want to be in jail, but I knew that the principle of confidentiality was so important that I had to, because if people can't trust us to come to us to tell us the things that government and powerful corporations don't want us to know, we're dead in the water. The public won’t know. That’s why I was sitting in jail. For the public’s right to know.'

What exactly didn’t the public know that Miller was heroically trying to expose? What great interest was she bringing forward?

Miller’s rhetoric fails to match the reality of the situation she created for herself. In this case, the person who 'trusted' Miller was not a whistleblower fearing reprisal from the government or a corporation. He was the government. He was not revealing information that the administration didn’t want to get out into the open. He was performing a task that may have been orchestrated inside the White House meant to silence criticism of the White House’s policy on Iraq.

Libby wasn’t a potential victim of the powerful interests. Miller wasn’t protecting him from retribution, other than punishment for breaking a law he fully understood. She was protecting a cabal of political operatives that put to shame the very notion of Constitutional protections for revealing the truth.

According to media reports, Libby may have exposed Valerie Plame, the wife of ex-diplomat Joe Wilson after he published an article showing that the Bush administration’s claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger, a claim that helped convince Congress and much of the public to support its war on Iraq, was false. In fact, suggested Wilson, the administration knew it was wrong but used faulty intelligence knowingly to manipulate public opinion.

So Libby was doing his best to hide the truth about the administration’s mishandling and manipulation of intelligence in order to build support for its intent to go to war against Iraq by acting as a confidential source in the leaking of the CIA agent’s identity. And the great public interest Miller wanted revealed was part of a smear campaign against an administration critic.

Contrary to Miller's incredible image of Libby as the potential victim of corporate coercion or a government smear campaign, Libby took the lead in keeping Wilson under close surveillance. According to the Los Angeles Times, Libby monitored Wilson’s statements in the press and urged an aggressive White House campaign against him. Reports the Los Angeles Times, Libby was 'angry,' and his interest in getting back at Wilson was 'intense.'

Miller knows this. She knows exactly what she has done. So to bring bogus rhetoric about poor Libby, a potential victim of the government and corporations, is a disgrace and besmirches the very ethic Miller pretends to uphold.

Even more detrimental to Miller’s claim to be protecting her source on idealistic grounds is the fact that Libby gave her clearance early on in the investigation. Later, according to Miller’s own account, his lawyer indicated in a letter to her that Miller should keep quiet about certain portions of her relationship with Libby unless she could say something that might get him off the hook. By her own admission, Miller implies that she based her refusal to testify on the grounds that it might make Libby out to be a perjurer.

According to a recent statement by media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), 'When your reason for not testifying is a belief that your source has committed a crime, then ‘journalistic privilege’ begins to look more like obstruction of justice.'

Miller is also trying to cover herself in the garb of victimhood, journalistic idealism, and Constitutional protections to hide the fact that she served the White House by disseminating White House misinformation about their case for war. Her various reports as an 'embedded' journalist during the early stages of the war and her uncritical publication of White House talking points about Iraq’s imminent threat prior to the war served as overt propaganda for an administration that misled the public into war.

Miller’s role, through and through, has struck at the very heart of the concept of a free press. She allowed herself to become a tool of the government. She protected the powerful rulers against the truth, against public exposure of their crimes and manipulations, and she topped it off with a pretense of caring about ethics. Her actions helped lead us into a war that has killed thousands. What could be more deplorable?



--Reach Joel Wendland at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.